The Atlantic argues dissolving the councils doesn’t make much difference, since they were largely for show and didn’t really do very much anyway. We would argue that’s not the point at all. The image of CEOs abandoning one of the most pro-business Presidents ever, with one damning statement after another, is as close to a no confidence motion as we are able to deliver in this country. And that’s why it is important. Crucially important.

Bannon’s Valedictory Remarks?

An extraordinarily odd story appeared in Axios, contending the President’s Chief Strategist saw both the disbanding of the President’s business councils and Trump’s wild news conference as big positives because they represent the President abandoning “globalists” in favor of “his people”. The reason it struck us as odd, is even though it was sourced to “friends and associates”, it reads like a one-on-one interview with Steve Bannon.

The overall tone is that of a sensei who’s taught his prize student all he can. Either that or immense, unrelenting hubris. (We are not going to go out on a limb here: since speculation about Bannon’s longevity by others has been frequent. and so far always wrong.)

Then we discovered Bannon speaking, apparently on-the-record, with another news organization. Also odd because it’s a Left-wing publication, The American Prospect. Ostensibly, it was to praise that publication for its China coverage (as we’ve often seen on trade matters, Far-left and Far-right are not that far apart).

Here are some highlights:

• While not quite as crude as Anthony Scaramucci’s now infamous rant about Bannon et. al., Bannon brags he’s got his foes at the Defense, State, and Treasury Departments “wetting themselves”.

• He also (perhaps surprisingly) calls the fringe Far-right “a collection of clowns”.

• And he hurls a criticism at Democrats (that in our opinion is spot on): “the longer they talk about identity politics, I got ’em…. If the left is focused on race and identity, and we go with economic nationalism, we can crush the Democrats.”

Things Just Got A Lot Rockier For White Supremacist Website

Wired reports that Cloudfare decided to drop its protection of the Daily Stormer website, leaving it open to cyber attacks. At which point it was promptly attacked, and crashed. Cloudfare has a near-monopoly on protection against certain types of attacks, particularly so-called denial of service. The move is huge, because up until now, Cloudfare had a policy of ignoring the content it protected.

We don’t have a good answer to that. We can judge people for their lack of backbone, but we can’t really fault them. We don’t mean to sound like apologists. We would more freely question their decision to join the Trump Administration in the first place, knowing the high percentage chance of something like this coming down.

Certainly, the many former high ranking military officers in the Administration, all of whom served under several Presidents of both parties are used putting the interests of the country first (although are also strong adherents to chain of command.)

As for the others: many of us have power dreams. And for many currently in power in DC, Trump was their lucky break and once-in-a-lifetime shot. It’s hard to give that up.

Especially if you think this “blows over” as even Trump’s most outlandish attacks always have. What we do know is it is our responsibility to do whatever we can to make sure that doesn’t happen this time!